Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (12 page)

“
Sunday?”

I opened another beer.

“
Sunday? Yeah, okay, Sunday.”

TIMOTEO LEAPT IN
surprise as the electric doors behind him slid apart suddenly, with a hiss. Warily, he turned around to see what was going on.

“
¡Tranquilo!”
I said.
“It’s okay.”
Any other day this might have made for a good laugh. But the faces around me were grim.
“They’re automatic. They use radar.”
I gestured toward the sensor, above the doorway to the airport; Timoteo peered mistrustfully at its little red eye, blinking on and off. And a funny feeling lodged itself in my stomach as I wondered: What else had I forgotten to tell them?

It was like crossing the border again, though my friends were even more nervous. We were leaving one world, the sleepy, isolated
barrio
of El Mirage, with its orchards, dirt roads, and dusty cantinas, and heading to another—fast, urban, sprawling Los Angeles. The change itself, for these country boys, would be hard to get used to ... but at least it would be from one mainly Hispanic environment to another. What had them really worried was the journey itself: to get to Los Angeles, we would have to pass through a place even more foreign, a terra incognita of video displays and moving sidewalks, a world with a different language and set of rules for behavior: the world of air travel.

There was no
coyote
to mistrust on this crossing, no cop to bribe. The sole requirement for success was not to appear like a foreigner, not to stand out. Failure could mean deportation for them, and trouble (“aiding and abetting illegal aliens”) for me. As dependent as I was on them not to blow it, they were dependent on me to tell them what to do.

Between Thursday, when we decided, and Sunday night, when we left, I racked my brain: what did one need to know to operate in an airport? For me it was a hard question because it was almost second nature; but for them it was the United States at its most technologically advanced, its most intimidating. To reduce their fear of the unknown, I drew a map of the airport parking garage, the terminal building, and the route we would take through them to get to our gate. As we went over the map, I realized that educating my friends was in my own best interest, too—to succeed in this, I would have to be a tour guide who did not look as though he were guiding.

The main challenge, though, was to teach them how to
look
at home in an airport. Dress, of course, was very important: the work boots, jeans, and visor caps had to go. Victor and Ismael needed haircuts; Rebeca, Fortino’s wife, was kind enough to oblige. Saturday we combed the flea markets—“swap meets,” as they’re known in Arizona—for other clothes. Carlos, a step ahead of the game, spotted and negotiated the purchase of four inexpensive nylon flight bags. At the homes of some Phoenix friends, I found more items.

But looking at home also meant
acting
at home, and dressing right would do no good if they didn’t appear comfortable. They had to look as though they had been through the airport a hundred times, as though nothing for them was new or unusual—though, in fact, almost everything was. The worst giveaway, I thought, was likely to be the way they acted with each other. Their way of handling a public place in Phoenix, which I was familiar with through our weekend trips downtown, would never do. We couldn’t cluster together in the customary way, the five of us sauntering elbow to elbow, talking with our hands, whistling, laughing, gabbing, stepping as one. Not only would I stand out, as usual—but they would be more obvious than a mob of Japanese businessmen. They had to be less gregarious, less animated, in more of a hurry. In short, they had to be more
American.

In our coaching sessions in the tiny living room of Fortino’s apartment, over the bawling of the babies, we sketched out a plan: Victor and Ismael would walk together in the lead. A few feet behind them, Carlos would follow. Taking up the rear of this loose procession would be Timoteo and me. In case of an emergency, I could direct Carlos in inconspicuous English; he could pass the information on, in Spanish, to the guys in front. By having Timoteo next to me, I could cover the weakest link. It had taken nearly three days of argument and reassurance to persuade Timoteo to come—the idea of airplanes terrified him.
“What if we crash? Wouldn’t it be easier to take the bus? You know, I have heart problems. I think it would be safer for me to stay on the ground. ”
Slowly, though, he came to realize that the others were set on the trip, even a little excited about going, and that if he stayed he would be left alone. To a Mexican, that might be the worst fate on earth.

I dropped by the little apartment three hours before we were to leave, to reassure fainthearted Timoteo and see if everyone was getting ready. But when Rebeca opened the door, I was amazed by the sight. They had been ready for hours. Hair was neatly combed, faces cleanly shaved. Carlos wore beige slacks and a brown cardigan sweater, along with the good oxfords he always donned on weekends. Victor wore a Barnard College sweatshirt. Ismael had on a Pink Floyd T-shirt, which I was not satisfied with, and high-top Converse basketball shoes, which I was—real Mexicans almost never wore those. The pièce de résistance, though, was a seersucker suit and button-down shirt I had rounded up for Timoteo. At forty years old, he was the most rustic of the group, normally looking as though he might have stepped from straight behind an ox and plow. But the suit worked a miraculous transformation. It didn’t make him look American, but it did nearly make him look professional—like a dentist, perhaps, from the provinces, a visiting Rotarian. Until I noticed the buttons.

“
Timoteo,”
I said,
“don’t ask me why, but here it looks best if you don’t button all those buttons on your jacket. Just the middle one. Yeah, like that.”
He gave me a look of bewilderment—there’s such a thing as buttons you don’t button?—but adjusted the suit accordingly.

Motel neighbors dropped in to say good-bye—which left not even standing room in the apartment—and then it was time to go.
“¡Vaya con Dios!”
said Matilde, a kindhearted mother of nine.
“¡Que les vaya muy bien!”
May all go well for you! Carlos, Victor, and Ismael filed out and into the Nova, carrying the flight bags filled with their few possessions. These were men you didn’t need to tell to travel light. And then, finally, Timoteo emerged. At his side he lugged his flight bag—but attached to it, with twine, were two rolled-up blankets and the portable stereo.

“
Timoteo, you can’t take that. Men in seersucker suits don’t carry blankets and radios with them on airplanes. ”

“
But I’ve heard you can check baggage, like we do on a bus!”
he protested.

I explained that we couldn’t stand around the baggage claim at Los Angeles International Airport for half an hour, waiting for blankets and a boom box to issue from the carousel. No one seconded me, but neither did they support Timoteo, and, since I was tour guide, he had lost again. The “box” was left to Fortino and Rebeca, in thanks, and the blankets to their babies.

*

As the electric door slid shut behind us, we entered the terminal, passing rows of plastic seats and the shiny display windows of gift shops and newsstands. Victor and Ismael, taking my advice too literally, set off at nearly a run, quickly outpacing the rest of us. We caught up when they stopped at the first bank of flight monitors.

“
Hey, take it easy! We’re not in this much of a hurry. Look, we need to go to the next set of monitors—those’ll probably be the ones for our airline. I’ll be right behind. ”

The airport was nearly empty. We had chosen Sunday night because, according to border-crosser superstition (which may have some basis in fact), that was when the least number of Border Patrol and other police was likely to be on duty. But what had seemed an advantage also made us look awfully vulnerable. Instead of lost in a crowd, we were practically alone.

One endless concourse after another broke away from the large main terminal, and I realized that the lack of other travelers wasn’t the only reason the airport struck me as so vast. It was, simply, the largest indoor place we had been together. My friends’ eyes were wide open, and mine were seeing something new this night as well.

Besides all the space, there were the colors. The only bright ones came from colored electric signs; everything else—including my friends—looked pallid and ghostly, bathed in fluorescent light. From the textured walls to the hot dog cafes, everything was synthetic, plasticized. Even the wind, spilling cold and unnoticed from ceiling vents, was processed. The terminal was lined with restaurants and bars, but somehow the air carried none of their smells, no hint of cooking or consuming, no smells at all, really, except a vague, musty trace of air conditioning, and a whiff of disinfectant.

There were other sensations of a "nice," institutional environment, the likes of which hardly exist in rural Mexico. Our footsteps, for example—always, when we were out, we walked to the beat of our own shoes, hitting the pavement or the linoleum or the road, kicking up dust. Ismael even had taps on his boots. But the airport carpet gave no answer to a treading foot. Over the indistinct, nearly unnoted whoosh of cold air, I heard Muzak for the first time. Strange, I thought, that I hadn't noticed it before; though perhaps not, since not noticing it was exactly the point. Perhaps its subconscious message of relaxation had collided, this evening, with my conscious wish to keep alert and wary—in something like the way my friends' disguises, and physical distance from each other, collided with the way they really were; or the way this journey collided with what was customary and realistic for an illegal alien. For us, nothing was congruous in that airport; all was out of joint, trouble waiting to happen.

The next monitors indicated we would have to go to a terminal one level down. I nodded toward the nearest escalators. Victor and Ismael began to cross the floor, but suddenly halted, wide eyed, as an electric cart carrying elderly people beeped behind them and whirred across their path. Almost immediately following this, the room filled with a string of loud announcements over the public-address system.

“Wells, Mr. Brad Wells. Hart, Miss Ruth Hart. Waters, Mr. Todd Waters. Please come to a white paging telephone.” They stood there, stunned and seemingly paralyzed—had they been caught? It was an authoritative male voice, and the message had been delivered right over their heads. How were they to know it was broadcast all over the airport? How were they to know the phrases were merely people’s names? Tense and apprehensive, Victor and Ismael looked back at Carlos, himself frozen, and then at me.

“
There’s nothing wrong!”
I hissed to Carlos.
“¡Que sigan! Keep moving! Tell them to keep moving!”
Carlos passed the word, and slowly, like steam engines picking up speed, they began to walk again. As we continued across the wide floor, I thanked God there were no Krishnas about.

I might have been gaining some confidence as a troubleshooter, but things soon got worse. At the top of the escalator, Victor and Ismael balked, a panic-stricken look on their faces. Carlos immediately walked up to them and started talking.
"What's wrong?"
I asked nervously. "
What's going on?"

“
They’ve never been on one before,”
said Carlos, who, to my relief, had. He gave them a crash course in Spanish spoken so rapidly I had barely an idea what he said.
“Pónganse trucha,”
were his last words, slang which translated literally to “Make like a trout”—be alert, wary, quick. But Victor and Ismael made more like puppies. They took tentative steps onto the thing, grasping the railings tightly. Carlos stepped on next. Taking hold of Timoteo’s arm, I strode forward without hesitation.
“Put your foot on the first step,”
was all I said, as I dragged him on. The others looked back worriedly from several steps below; there now could be no pretense that we were traveling separately.
“Be careful at the bottom!”
I warned them.

Only Timoteo stumbled, but I was there to catch him. As the beginning of our concourse came into view, I felt a newfound respect for
coyotes
: maybe they did overcharge, but this line of work took years off your life.

Away we went. I breathed easier as we entered the long straight stretch toward the gates, dropping back as we got closer to the gate. They knew the number. We had plenty of time till departure. No wrong turns were possible. We wouldn’t need to talk again until we had boarded the plane: the end of Phase i was in sight.

At that moment the security checkpoint came into view. How on earth had I forgotten it? For months I had been training to see situations through their eyes, and what I saw now panicked me. Two sets of sophisticated X-ray machines. TV screens for looking into them. Doorframes we were evidently supposed to walk through, and above them two more small red lights, like the one over the sliding door at the terminal entrance: invisible rays, I now could see, were going to be my downfall. Conveyor belts leading into the machines: were we to lie down on those? Worse than all this, behind the machines sat a police officer at a desk. And posted in front, large signs with red and blue letters, in English, and an official seal. If you read English, you would know, of course, that the signs warned of the consequences if you were carrying a firearm or joking about bombs. But if you were Carlos, Victor, Ismael, or Timoteo, these signs could seem to be a warning about anything in the world.